January 7 in the history of Psychology

1906 — John C. Flanagan was born. Flanagan was an aviation psychology pioneer, the first psychologist in the U.S. Air Force (1941), and founder of the American Institutes for Research. He helped develop the critical incident technique of personnel selection and research-based programs of individual instruction. APA Distinguished Professional Contributions Award, 1976; American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal, 1993.

1908 — Sigmund Freud’s “Little Hans” had his first phobic attack. The case of Little Hans led to Freud’s theories of infantile sexuality and dreams as expressions of wish fulfillment.

1946 — The APA’s flagship journal, the American Psychologist, was first published. Dael Wolfle, then executive director of the APA, was the first editor.

1947 — Spring Grove State Hospital in Maryland announced that it had released several patients with “incurable” mental disorders after they had undergone prefrontal lobotomies. There was widespread use of the prefrontal lobotomy in the 1940s.

1958 — John W. Atkinson’s article “Motivational Determinants of Risk-Taking Behavior” was published in Psychological Review.

1965 — Robert M. Gagné’s book, The Conditions of Learning was published. By 1977, the book had gone through three editions and had been cited in over 875 other publications. The journalCurrent Contents featured Gagné’s book as a “citation classic.”

1988 — The use of a fetal tissue transplant to relieve the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease was first reported. Neurosurgeon Ignacio Navarro Madrazo of Mexico City’s La Raza Medical Center reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that he had transplanted brain tissue from a spontaneously aborted fetus into the brain of 35-year-old Leonor Cruz Bello, whose symptoms abated within weeks.